I know I know, I should have posted this a few days ago, but I’ve been sick! 🙂
Like I mentioned earlier, Emily and I made the trek to St. Louis to visit my parents for Thanksgiving. Sean was also in town from Seattle. Wednesday night, my sister Megan and I stayed up sharing a bottle of Chateau Ste. Michelle cabernet and talking until 3:30am (430 my time!). We rarely get to do that, so it was very cool. Thursday was Turkey Day! Man I love thanksgiving…I think we should have it at least twice a year! Although, I’m sure there are a number of turkeys out there who disagree with me. Mom cooked and awesome meal for us and Emily made the famous Marshall Rolls. Aunt Karen, Uncle Ted, and Scott made it down from west St. Louis as well and it was really nice seeing them.
Sean, Manders (friend of ours and Megan’s from high school), and myself then made our trip to the movie theatre to catch our annual bad-movie-on-turkey-day which started back in the day with my selection of “Paycheck” starring Matt Damon. Sean’s selection this year was Hitman. HOO BOY was it rotten. We got to the theatre about 15 or 20 minutes late so we missed the beginning of the movie ( **cue Office Space “I wouldn’t say I was missing it, Bob…” ***). The acting was lousy, the female character in the movie probably only got the role cause she showed her boobs. What can you expect from a movie produced by Vin Diesel? But I digress…
The rest of the week was pretty uneventful – we went out to an irish pub in Belleville, IL that was nice, hung out at a local bar in O’Fallon, had an awesome hamburger at Denny’s (eggs and hashbrowns on a burger! YUM!), and hung around the house. Saturday we did a family trip to Pierre Marquette State Park to lunch on their lodge’s famous fried chicken and take some family photos.
While we were home for thanksgiving Mom and Dad presented us with some new gifts for Little Sean. As we’ve mentioned before, my dad is *very* handy in wood working. When Sean and I were born, he made us a cradle that was also used for my sister when she was born. Well, now we have a cradle of our own:

Paul’s mom has also recently dusted off her knitting needles and made a fun little hat for Little Sean:

Can’t wait to have him try them both out (only three more months to go!!). Here are some highlight photos from the trip:
me showing my approval of the baby bump:
My parents – dad looks great! (mom too!)

I’ll post some more from my dad’s set of photos after I process the huge DSLR snapshots from his Nikon D80 🙂

Emily and I took a trip to St. Louis for Thanksgiving this year.Â My sister and brother were both in town as well.Â I didn’t bring a heavy enough jacket with me and now I’m fighting a nasty cold….so now I am going to bed and I will post photos and a run-down of turkey day at a time in the very near future.

At work last week, I just happened to walk by a co-worker who was talking to someone about looking for a cat. I chimed in that we had been thinking about trying to find a new home for Chip, since we’ve been having some trouble with him not staying out of the crib, and not thinking he’d be a good match when the baby comes. Janet (my co-worker) and I spent a lot of time talking, and tonight, she and her kids came to pick him up. They are very excited to have a cat, and live in a nice area where he can look out at the woods and even hunt a mouse that they’ve been trying to catch in their garage! It’s sad, but we’ve had a lot of trouble bonding with Chip over the last year, and were really determined that if we were to give him away, that we would want a good home, not a pound, to go to.

We told Janet that we’d give her a 2 week return policy, just in case it didn’t work out, but she said that there’s no way we’re getting him back! 🙂

We hope that Chip loves his new home; they have a pug that he can play with, two little kids, and 2 teenagers. We were skeptical that he’d get along with the little kids, being that he’s never been around them before, but he sat and let them pet him right away and even nuzzled them!

I went to Hobby Lobby the other day and bought 6″ wooden letters to spell Sean’s name, and painted them colors to match his bedding. They eventually will be hung on one of the walls, as soon as we get a better idea of where everything is going in the room. Click the picture below:

Many people have warned me…”eventually you won’t like having those weekly pictures of yourself on the internet.” Well, I think I hit that point this week. I hit a weight this week that’s a little hard for me to handle. I know that it’s a good thing that I’m gaining…it’s just that ever existant struggle with girls and weight that’s hard to overcome. I do realize though, that lots of friends and family members that don’t see me all the time enjoy looking at the pictures, and so I’ll keep them going just for them. 🙂 Consider yourself lucky!Â Click here to see this week’s picture (24 weeks). Only 16 left to go! 🙂

Last night I finally sold the Durango. While I did enjoy the truck – drives smoothly, it was quiet, etc…I hated going to the gas pump. The Durango had a 25 gallon tank and got between 13 and 17 miles per gallon. Every two weeks or so, it cost $65 to $75 just to fill up it! That hurt 🙂

I had the truck listed on Craigslist for quite a while and had a couple of lowball offers on it. Last night Matt at City Auto Sales in Elsmere, KY bought it from me. Now its time to start shopping around again. Hopefully going to get into something like a VW Jetta VR6!

We received the crib from Laura today (thanks Laura!!) and we put it all together. We put the bedding on it just to see what it would look like. We need to wash it still, but we couldn’t resist a sneak peak!Â We are so in love with the bedding that Paul’s parents got for us (Lary & Narni) and we can’t wait to see a little boy all snuggled up in it!

Megabyte was extremely interested in the crib, so we let her try it out. She pranced all around in the crib (we think she just wanted to be near Little Sean’s bear). Once we figure out for sure which way the room will be set up, we can hang the wall hangings and our little shelf 🙂

The crib and changing table used to be my little brother Philip’s, 16 years ago. My mom saved them; Laura used them for her son Mitchell, and now Little Sean gets to use them! How cool is that? They are a beautiful set and we’re really blessed to have them!
Check out pictures below: